Senate Condemns Rebirthing Techniques - Women's Congressional Policy Institute

On October 18, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, a resolution (S. Res. 276) expressing the sense of the Senate that rebirthing is a dangerous practice and should be prohibited.

Sponsored by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), the resolution contains a number of findings, including:

“Rebirthing” is the most dangerous form of attachment therapy, a controversial and scientifically unsupported form of therapy that claims to treat emotionally disturbed children by using physical restraints;
Rebirthing techniques attempt to reenact the birth process by restraining a child with blankets or other materials and forcing the child to emerge unaided;
Rebirthing techniques are based on the erroneous assumption that a reenactment of the birth process will treat children with reactive attachment disorder, a psychiatric condition characterized by the inability to form emotional attachments, by purging the child of rage resulting from past mistreatment and allowing the child to form stronger emotional attachments in the future;
Between 1995 and 2005, at least 5 children in the United States have died from forms of attachment therapy; and
In 2002, the president of the American Psychiatric Association condemned rebirthing techniques as “extreme methods [that] pose serious risk and should not be used under any circumstances.”

Sen. Salazar told the story of Candace Newmaker, a 10-year old girl from North Carolina who was brought to Colorado to undergo rebirthing: “Her adoptive mother believed that this procedure would help her establish a stronger relationship with Candace, who was having difficulty adjusting to her new home and who had been in and out of the foster care system. By paying $7,000 for someone to diagnose and to treat Candace, her adoptive mother believed that she would establish a connection with her new daughter. After a few days, the hired ‘experts’ decided that ‘rebirthing’ would erase Candace’s childhood memories so that she could form a lasting mother-daughter relationship. Candace was wrapped in flannel blankets, held down by the weight of four adults, who bounced her and squeezed her to simulate contractions. When Candace begged for the procedure to cease, the adults holding her down ignored her pleas. When she told the strangers restraining her that she felt she was going to die, they ignored her. In April 2001, when Candace was brought to Children’s Hospital in Denver, she was unconscious. She had been restrained under blankets for over an hour. Tragically, she suffocated to death.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) explained that “in 2003, North Carolina did outlaw this unsafe therapy…Today, Senator Salazar and I urge other States to do exactly that. The Candace Newmaker resolution encourages States to examine the rebirthing technique and enact laws prohibiting this dangerous practice. Organizations such as the American Psychological Association fully support the ban of this technique. The possible loss of another child to this harmful therapy should be enough reason for the Senate to pass this resolution; if we can affect one child with our action, a child we have not met who might be exposed to this, we should do so.”